Lemons

Be it to summer drinks, crisp salads, or sandwich spreads, adding a few shaves of this could be good news for your skin: lemon zest.

A compound in lemon peels appears to help ward off a common skin cancer — squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) — by up to 34 percent. And it’s all thanks to a citrus compound called d-Limonene.

Look to Lemons

D-Limonene seems to help keep skin cancer cells from growing and multiplying. And you can find plenty of the stuff in citrus peels; d-Limonene makes up more than 90 percent of citrus-peel oil. In a study of people who lived in sunny Arizona, those who consumed the most citrus zest had the lowest rates of SCC. And the more lemon, orange, and grapefruit zest the people consumed, the more they were protected from SCC